Economist: Housing bubble caused Great Depression, too

John Stark | Bellingham Herald

BELLINGHAM - Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith draws some disturbing parallels between the events that led up to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the severe economic slump of today.

Smith, professor of economics and law at Chapman University, won his Nobel in 2002. He spoke Friday, June 5, before a standing-room-only crowd in Fraser Hall at Western Washington University.

Most people think of the Great Depression as originating in the stock market crash of 1929. But Smith's research indicates that the 1929 crash was itself the result of an earlier collapse in the boom housing market during the Roaring '20s.

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